Past fuels Browns' fans' 'hope'

Sunday, I'll be clad in orange and brown amongst the 60,000 or so in Heinz Field to watch the Browns' 2013 season come to an end against the Steelers.

A year ago, I was one of about 50,000, if that, in Heinz Field to endure the exact same thing.

Both times I purchased the tickets in the middle of the summer, knowing full well a double-digit-loss Browns team likely was to be there. I knew full well another double-digit loss to the hated Steelers could be in the offing.

Yet I bought the tickets anyway. So, too, did seemingly hundreds of other Browns fans.

No joke. Looking around the stadium that cold day in 2012, there were large numbers of fellow Browns fans there to watch the dismal season end.

Will the same thing occur this Sunday? Who knows, although I'd be willing to bet there will be others in orange and brown amongst the Terrible Towel-twirling fans at the Giant Mustard Bottle at the Confluence.

It won't come close to overwhelming the place the way front-running Steeler fans have been known to overwhelm Cleveland the last decade or so. Yet those fans will be there.

Which begs the question: Why?

Why in the world would fans show up in the home stadium of the hated rival — regardless of what the reciprocal feelings may be — to watch their team fumble, stumble and bumble its way to the finish line? Why put up with the cold weather and potential harassment from the home fans?

The answer lies in hope.

It's hope that's based in delusion and desperation, but it's still hope.

It's something that comes from absolutely nothing this incarnation of the Cleveland Browns has done or earned. Honestly, why would a team that has consistently been among the three worst teams in the NFL the past 15 years deserve any of this mindless devotion?

It rests in a decision made long ago, long before train wreck after train wreck of Browns seasons began in 1999. It rests with something that happened when Art Modell picked up his team and moved it to Baltimore in 1995.

At that time — well, maybe a little later than that — the NFL announced that while Baltimore would get the franchise, Cleveland would get the name, colors and history. Baltimore would get what would become a two-time Super Bowl champion and nine-time (soon to be 10-time?) playoff qualifier, while Cleveland would get to wear orange and brown on Sundays — occasionally Thursdays — and call the likes of Jim Brown, Bernie Kosar, et al, its own still.

Boy, what a deal.

Yet, in that one decision, pro football — a term used liberally in Northeast Ohio these days — fans found themselves irrevocably connected with a team they really had no connection to. That's where the delusion comes in, because these aren't the Browns, no matter how many times highlights of 1964 or 1980 or 1986 are shown.

Would it be different if they came back as the Cleveland Pigeons or the Cleveland Lemmings? Who knows.

They came back as the same team they left as, at least in name and uniform. And it is that name and uniform those fans cling to.

The old Browns, the real Browns, weren't a laughingstock. They weren't the Packers or Cowboys, per se, but they had more than enough tradition and success that fans had no reason to be ashamed.

The new Browns, the current Browns, are everything those Browns weren't. They are a national punchline of miserable football.

So what keeps those fans tied to what is nothing more than laundry? Simple, a memory from the old Browns they keep latching on to, be it the 1964 championship or the 1980s run of AFC title games.

For me, it's a late Sunday afternoon in October 1993, in the dump that was old Cleveland Stadium. The Steelers were in town, back when the rivalry really was one of nastiest, maybe, in all of sports.

And as the afternoon turned to evening, as the blue skies turned dark, Eric Metcalf fielded a punt at his own 25, headed right and then up the field. By the time he hit the end zone some 75 yards later — directly in front of the Dawg Pound seats we had that day — the old stadium was a delirious, quaking cacophony of noise as orange pom-poms gleefully shook courtesy of the sellout crowd.

That return, Metcalf's second of the game, no less, helped the Browns beat the Steelers that day. And you didn't get from the stadium to the car so much by walking as you were floating in the joy of an amazing win.

It is that moment — the sounds of the crowd, the sight of those orange pom-poms, the sheer unfettered joy of the walk back to the car afterward — I cling to. It's the moment the Browns — in any incarnation — would forever become "my team."

It's why I watch Sunday after depressing Sunday since 1999. It's why I'll end another year sitting in Heinz Field watching the Browns end yet another miserable double-digit-loss season.

And maybe, just maybe, this time I'll once again get to enjoy the walk back to the car after a win over the Steelers.

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